In the four years before the Class of 2025 stepped on Grounds, Virginia’s big sports were dominant. Football had three winning or .500 seasons, men’s basketball had won the 2019 national title and men’s lacrosse had won two national titles. But since then, football has had just one winning season, men’s basketball has missed the NCAA Tournament twice and men’s lacrosse has come up ringless.
It has been a dim four years — not excepting six national titles and a women’s swim and dive dynasty that is one of college sports’ greatest of all time. But college athletics is also moving into a “new era,” kickstarted when the Class of 2025 stepped on Grounds for the first time as students. In the fall of 2021, college athletics finally opened up the usage of name, image and likeness deals. Virginia, it seems, is capitalizing on that new era. And it is increasingly looking like it’s going to turn the last four years into a blip compared to the athletic department’s past success in its biggest sports.
2025 marks the first year that Virginia’s football, men’s basketball and men’s lacrosse teams have all missed the postseason in the same year since 2013. If the baseball team — which currently sits in the “Next Four Out” section of Baseball America’s projected field — also misses the postseason, 2025 will mark the first time that football, men’s basketball, men’s lacrosse and baseball will collectively fail to qualify for the NCAA Tournament since 1992.
To many in the Class of 2025, who have not seen their football team play in a bowl game or their men’s basketball team win an NCAA Tournament game, it may seem like things have always been this way. But that is simply not the case. The basketball program, under Tony Bennett, reached a top-five ranking eight times since 2013, and going back further there has been other sustained success — Terry Holland and Ralph Sampson reached two Final Fours in the 1980s, and Virginia played in 13 of 17 NCAA Tournaments leading into the late 1990s. The football program may have trudged through a barren period before beginning the climb that culminated in a 2019 Orange Bowl appearance, but it reached 16 bowl games in 21 years leading up to 2007.
The past four years have seen none of that historical success. They have been more disappointing than fruitful, but a return to success could be ahead, as recent developments in football and men’s basketball forecast a positive swing.
In the blink of an eye over the last four years, the NCAA transformed its focus on the student-athlete into an ultra-capitalist business, and Virginia did not miss the trend. The Cavaliers sport a gargantuan NIL budget that is projected to be one of the 15 highest in the nation.
The changes all start with the mass mobilization of the alumni community that has been spearheaded by both the athletic department and Cav Futures, the University’s NIL collective. Over the past couple of years, many wealthy alumni have given generous donations to fund some of the school’s athletic programs.
Whether it be the out-front funding dedication to women’s basketball shown by Alexis Ohanian, Class of 2005 alumnus and Reddit co-founder, or football’s multi-million dollar anonymous donations that make headlines, it is clear that alumni are leading the charge in funding a successful athletic program. It has taken a few years and some major struggles, but the Cavalier athletic programs are seeing the potential benefits.
Football has the third-most transfers in the country for schools that did not undergo a coaching change, and many of these transfers have come from top programs like Alabama, Ohio State and Miami. There is now legitimate buzz around a program that has been a doormat in the ACC for years, and it feels as if this is the year that Virginia turns a corner and becomes relevant again.
Men’s basketball has undergone a similar transition after the hiring of Coach Ryan Odom. The 2025-26 team will not feature a single player from the 2024-25 roster and instead is composed of seven transfers, three freshmen and two redshirt players. Included in that haul are eight former or incoming four-star recruits. It’s a squad that would not have seemed possible without a significant growth in NIL funding.
Some more time may be necessary, but there is reason to believe that in the next year or two, the Hill in Scott Stadium will be full of students for the entirety of football games and John Paul Jones Arena will have a full student section for more than a couple games each season.
The University’s Class of 2025 will never be able to say they witnessed their men’s basketball team win an NCAA Tournament game or football team play in a bowl game. But as NIL continues to dominate the new environment of college sports, Virginia looks like it will continue to embrace it, foraying further into the field and clambering atop the pile in the bigger sports.
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